65 C 7 



E BEWCASTLE CROSS 



BY 



ALBERT S. COOK 

Professor of the English Language and Literature in Yale University 



Read before the Modern Language Association 
of America, at Cornell University, Dec. 29, 1909 



M 



PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR 

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT 

1913 






PREFACE 

My first publication dealing with the date of either 
of the two famous runic crosses in England ap- 
peared in 1890 {Academy 37. 153—4). In this I came 
to the conclusion that the language of the poetic 
fragments on the Ruthwell Cross must be as late as 
the 10th century ^ and very likely subsequent to 950. 
In 1901 I resumed and extended my investigation 
of 1890, and came to the same general result as then 
{Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc, of America 17. 375—390). 

Not until 1909 had I seen either cross, but in 
August of that year 1 visited both Ruthwell and 
Bewcastle (Ruthwell, Aug. 25 and 27; Bewcastle, 
Aug. 26). I then attacked the problem of the Bew- 
castle Cross for the first time, and on December 29 of 
that year read the following paper before the Modern 
Language Association of America. If any one will 
take the trouble to compare this sketch with my 
monograph, ' The Date of the Ruthwell and Bewcastle 
Crosses' {Trans. Conn. Acad, of Arts and Sciences 17 
(1912). 213-361), he will see that the general con- 
clusions as to date do not differ widely in the two 
papers, though of course the treatment is much fuller 
in the later one, and new evidence is introduced. It 
may be worth noting that it was not until 1910 that 
I became acquainted with the views of either Enlart 
or Rivoira; my first knowledge of the latter's work 
came to me in a communication from England, dated 
Sept. 15, 1910. 

Yale University, April 18, 1913. 



■ ft 

'■ 
wl 25 1913 



THE BEWCASTLE CROSS 

On account of the limitations of time, I shall attempt 
to present no more than the briefest outline of my 
subject. 

I suppose it is generally known that the accepted 
date for the erection of the Bewcastle Cross, far up 
toward the Scottish border in Cumberland, is 670, 
the first year of King Ecgfrith, and that the Ruth well 
Cross, about 25 miles away, near the Solway Firth, 
and on practically the same parallel of latitude, is 
contemporaneous with it. 

In 1901 I attempted to show before this body that 
the Ruthwell Cross is to be assigned to a date at 
least as late as the 10th century. To-day I wish to 
present, with the utmost brevity, the considerations 
which lead me to assign the Bewcastle Cross to a 
still later date, perhaps the first quarter of the 12th 
century. These heads of discourse I hold myself ready 
to amplify and defend when my paper comes to be 
published. 

Both the Ruthwell and the Bewcastle Cross are 
adorned with sculptured figures and scenes from the 
Bible, and the Ruthwell Cross, besides, with one from 
the life of two saints. Both have vines, in which sit 
birds and animals, pecking at the fruit. In addition 
to this, the Bewcastle Cross has panels of interlaced 
or knot work, a sundial, a panel of chequer-work, and 
a group consisting of a man, a hawk, and, apparently, 
a perch for the hawk. 



4 The Bewcastle Cross 

The Ruthwell Cross has an extract from The Dream 
of the Rood in runes, while the Bewcastle Cross has 
a runic inscription of nine lines, partly undecipher- 
able, and a few shorter lines of runes, mostly undeci- 
pherable, consisting in part, at least, of proper names. 
Of these, one is especially important for our purpose, 
the name Jesus Christ, spelled Gessus Kristtus. 

All authorities agree that the crosses are virtually 
contemporaneous. I intend to deal chiefly with the 
Bewcastle Cross, but shall refer to the Ruthwell Cross 
when necessary. 

All modern interpretations, so far as they refer 
the Bewcastle Cross to the 7th century, go back to 
Maughan's readings in 1857. Maughan was for some 
years rector of Bewcastle church, which, with the 
rectory and one or two other houses, situated in a hilly, 
moorland, desolate region, constitute the hamlet of 
Bewcastle. A Roman road, called the Maiden Way, 
can still be traced southward to the Roman Wall, 
eight or ten miles distant; and the remains of the 
ruined mediaeval castle, made of stones from the 
Roman station within whose precincts the church is 
situated, still tower conspicuously near. Maughan 
was an amateur antiquary, like Haigh, his most 
formidable rival. In 1854 Maughan could make but 
little of the runes, and what he did read was incon- 
sistent with his readings between that date and 1857. 
Haigh's readings were radically different from both. 
Maughan's readings and renderings were followed by 
George Stephens, in his Old-Northern Bunk Monuments, 
by Henry Sweet, by Bishop Browne, and by Professor 
Collingwood — these being the chief Englishmen who 
have written on the subject. 

A critical study of both crosses was published by 
Vietor in 1895, with the result that he leaves very 



The Bewcastle Cross 5 

little of the readings proposed by Maughan for the 
Bewcastle Cross. 

In one place on the southern side of the cross 
Maughan reads Ecgfripu. Here Vietor finds nothing but 
a few faint, undecipherable traces ; below, Maughan 
reads fruman gear, interpreting it as ' in the first year.' 
Assuming that Ecgfripu is the genitive, he thus gets 
' in the first year of Ecgfrith,' etc., and so secures a 
date for the Cross. Haigh disagrees with him totally 
about these readings, and Vietor finds nothing that 
can be read. All the assumptions as to date, then, 
which rest upon a blind following of Maughan, are 
untrustworthy. Some of his readings seem to be 
correct, or nearly so, but those on which he chiefly 
depended for dating the cross are non-existent or 
illegible. 

So much, very cursorily, for destructive criticism of 
Maughan's view. I now propose to touch upon a 
series of points of a more constructive character. 

1. The compound word sigbekn, ' victory-sign,' seems 
to be legible in the long inscription. This, referring 
to the cross, and traceable ultimately to Constantine's 
In hoc signo vinces, is found four times in the Old 
English Elene, and may here be allusive to that poem. 
If so, the date of the cross can hardly be in the 7th 
century. 

2. On both the Bewcastle and the Ruthwell Cross, 
John the Baptist carries an aureoled lamb, the Agnus 
Dei. Didron, in his Christian Iconography, knows of 
no example of this earlier than one of the 13th cen- 
tury, in the cathedral of Rheims. We should not 
expect to find it, then, in the 7th century. 

3. If the man, the hawk, and the perch for the 
hawk, indicate that the sport of falconry was practised 
in England before this date, we may draw an infer- 



6 The Bewcastle Cross 

ence from the fact that falconry, according to the 
Encyclopcedia Britannica, was introduced into England 
about 860. 

4. There is deep cutting, if not undercutting, on 
both crosses, though perhaps more noticeable on the 
Ruthwell. Parker says this requires the use of the 
chisel, and that such deep cutting is found on no 
building of ascertained date before 1120. 

5. There is a panel of chequers on the Bewcastle 
Cross. Now chequers are an acknowledged feature 
of Norman work. Hence, inferentially, the Bewcastle 
Cross should fall within the Norman period. 

6. The words Gessus Kristtus on the Bewcastle Cross 
have a parallel in Gesus Krist (Krt) on two censers 
found in Denmark, both of which are assigned by 
Professor Wimmer to the last quarter of the 13th 
century. The use of G for J is, he says, sufficiently 
common at that period. 

7. All writers agree that the sundial belongs to the 
original sculpture. There are other sundials in England 
which are approximately referred to 943, 1065, 1096, 
11th century, 12th century, 13th century, and 1400. 
There are several in Cumberland and Westmorland 
that Professor Collingwood assigns to the 12th cent- 
ury and Norman churches, that which most resembles 
the Bewcastle dial being the latest of all these. 

8. Two words in the long inscription which are as 
plain as any are ceft Alcfripu, meaning ' in memory 
of Alcfrithu.' Mft, a variant of cefter, is nowhere 
found in Old English in this sense except here and 
on a few other memorial stones, but, with its variants, 
it is very common in Scandinavian inscriptions, and 
occurs several times in runic inscriptions of the Isle 
of Man belonging to the years 1050 — 1100, as well 
as a very few times on stones of the Northern and 



The Bewcastle Cross 7 

Western Isles, where the Norsemen had settled. It 
is fair to presume, then, that it had reached Cumber- 
land from the Isle of Man, not earlier than 1050, and 
probably later. 

9. If Alcfripu is the correct reading, this may be a 
feminine, and parallel to the Fripu on one of the 
runic crosses in the Isle of Man. 

10. These two high crosses of Great Britain must 
at least, from a comparison of their structure and 
ornament, be as late as the high crosses of Ireland, 
some of which can be dated by the names of historical 
persons which they contain. The earliest of these 
dates from 904, and the latest from 1161. The Cruci- 
fixion is common on the Irish crosses, and is found 
on the Ruthwell Cross. 

11. The vine-scrolls of both our crosses are notice- 
able. They are not found in the Lindisfarne Gospels, 
698 — 721, but something like them, or at least scrolls 
of foliage, occur in the Book of Kells, which competent 
authorities now incline to place at the beginning of 
the 10th century ; and they are also found on the Irish 
high crosses, which, as we have seen, can in no case 
be dated earlier than 904. Moreover, when such 
vines have, like these, birds and beasts intermingled, 
Sophus Muller, the chief authority on the subject 
of zoomorphic decoration in the Germanic countries, 
thinks they can not be earlier than the year 1000. 

There are other considerations into which I will 
not enter here, but none that would contradict, or 
much modify, what has here been adduced. 

By none of the tests do we reach a date much, if 
any, earlier than 900, and by some affinities the cross 
might belong to the 13th century. I am at present 
inclined to refer it to the first quarter of the 12th cen- 
tury, for the following reasons : 



8 The Bewcastle Cross 

1. The crosses contain features of Celtic, Scan- 
dinavian, Old English, and Norman provenience. They 
can hardly antedate the Norman Conquest, then, since 
the early Norman part of Westminster Abbey, the 
first piece of Norman work in England, was finished 
in 1066. 

2. The first strong and enlightened government that 
this part of Great Britain had experienced since the 
Romans left the country was at the hands of David I, 
who ruled Cumbria as prince or earl, with practically 
royal authority, from 1107 to 1124, and ruled Scotland 
admirably for 29 years more. David was educated 
and capable, founded Glasgow cathedral and several 
monasteries, was anxious to Christianize this region 
more perfectly, and used every endeavor to that end. 
His wife was a Saxon, and his friends Normans. He 
could command the best skill, since, like several of 
his royal relatives, he welcomed strangers of ability, 
and Normans and Saxons flocked to his court. His 
mother, Queen Margaret, one of the most perfect 
characters of history, was noted for her love of the 
arts — of beautiful books, gold and silver vessels, and 
embroidery. She founded the abbey of Dunfermline, 
and restored Iona. Moreover, she was devoted to the 
idea of the cross, every day recited the matins of the 
Holy Cross, erected beautiful crucifixes in the churches 
of St. Andrews and Dunfermline, before the latter of 
which she was buried, and cherished with the most 
passionate devotion on her deathbed a cross of gold 
set with large diamonds, enclosing an image of Christ 
sculptured in ivory, and adorned with gold, together 
with a fragment of the True Cross— the whole enclosed 
in a black case, whence the cross was familiarly known 
as the Black Cross. This she had brought with her — 
perhaps originally from the Continent — when she 



The Bewcastle Cross 9 

came to Scotland, this she bequeathed as an heirloom 
to her sons, and for this David built the church of 
Holyrood. The place where her husband fell in battle 
was marked by a commemorative cross, whence the 
place is still called Malcolm's Cross. The chapel of 
St. Margaret, on Castle Hill, the oldest building in 
Edinburgh, was probably erected by one of her sons 
to her memory. As for the so-called Black Cross, 
described above, it was carried off to England by 
Edward I, but regained by Robert Bruce. 

David I, then,' had the power in the district where 
the two crosses are found. He was devoted to his 
mother's memory, as his foundation of Holyrood 
shows, no less than she had been devoted to the idea 
of the cross ; he had the requisite education and taste ; 
in his lineage and in his person were represented all 
the races whose influence can be traced in the two 
crosses ; he had the zeal for religious foundations, 
for building, for administration; he could command 
the skill ; and he had a sufficient motive, were others 
lacking, in his desire to exalt Christianity within his 
province, and especially to mark its southern border, 
where it faced the English, by monuments which his 
people could admire and cherish, which proclaimed 
his faith and his filial piety, and which embodied and 
concentrated in themselves features from every branch 
of sculptural art which had flourished in the British 
Isles. 

The time suggested agrees with the various in- 
dications furnished by the work. Since there was no 
powerful prelate or rich monastery in the vicinity of 
the crosses, the task was one for royal munificence 
and resources ; and the character and ambitions, nay, 
the love and loyalty of the prince, provided sufficient 
motives for the undertaking. The attribution to this 



10 The Bewcastle Cross 

author does not admit of the strictest proof, but is 
perhaps as plausible as any hypothesis on the sub- 
ject is likely to be. I can think of only one serious 
objection, and that is that certain of the runic words 
decipherable may seem of too great antiquity ; but 
we must remember, as Wimmer, the greatest living 
runologist, has told us, that older forms are not in- 
frequently found upon stones of the latest period. 



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